KDE @ FOSDEM 2005

FOSDEM 2005 Sat 26 & Sun 27 February 2005, Universit� Libre de Bruxelles, Brussels.
http://www.fosdem.org/2005/
https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-events-benelux (mailinglist)
contact for KDE @ FOSDEM: Fabrice Mous <[email protected]>

All Finished

Photos

Jonathan http://jriddell.org/photos/2005-02-26-fosdem/
Sebastian http://vizzzion.org/?id=gallery&gcat=Fosdem2005
Raphiel http://jriddell.org/photos/2005-02-26-fosdem/raphiel/

Talk Writeups

Review of KDE's presence at fosdem

The Konqi posters with talk titles were fantastic. I don't think there was anyone at fosdem who didn't see Konqi and the K logo.
- the text on the posters could have been improved slightly - have the time/date under the title instead of above it, and include the speaker's name
- the talk posters would have been better with a small konqi/k logo then all the talks listed on the same poster, having different posters for each talk means not everyone sees all the talks
- The laminated posters were also great
- Could we get a big stuffed konqi to show off in 2006?
Merchandise
- We had some great t-shirts and case badges.
- We need proper procedures for getting merchandise - next year, I'd like to be selling stuffed Konqis, KDE Mugs (as seen at aKademy) and polo shirts.
- We need demo CDs to give away - slax/kubuntu? [this is difficult to do without professional help, burning CDs en-masse leads to problematic CDs. hopefully kubuntu can help next year, jr]
- Well done to the guys manning the stall, don't know what we'd have done without them
- Selling debian/gnome/firefox case badges is not acceptable on the stall, it's against trademark law besides our own branding needs
We had some great talks!
- Scott Wheeler's talk was attended by about 100 people
- There was no-one appointed to announce the talks, introduce the speakers, organise questions at the end, etc (Fab took on this role towards the end, thanks fab)
- Fab suggested bringing a microphone & amplifier to make it easier to hear the talks
- Could we get danimo to talk next year?
- The location of the dev room on the second day was great, on the first day less great [jr]
The youth hostel: Organisation was great, it was easy to get to FOSDEM, and near the hacking room - Well done Fab!
- near the uni would have been nice, but you can't have everything
The saturday night hacking room - This was great, and well-attended
- We could have done with better organisation of food/drink - although fab stepped up and went to buy beer after a while (-:
- it was unclear if food was going to be provided for us, should have been clearer
- The people at interface3 wanted us to run some talks for them - this is a great opportunity to evangalise kde if we go to interface3 in 2006. Could we somehow involve the kde-women project here? [kde-women is not really active, jr]
Transport
- Going by car from Netherlands is fun and means we can carry a lot of luggage plus leave stuff in the car, but it might be easier to just go by train. Also someone needs to buy a map of brussels and mark on it youth hostel, university & grand place. Please.

dot report

<a href="http://www.fosdem.org">FOSDEM</a> is Europe's biggest meeting of Free Software developers and KDE turned out in force at it last weekend. As well as talks in the main track on KDE and KDevelop, the KDE Developers room hosted a series of other talks. We also ran a stall and still found time for some hacking.

FOSDEM is a spectacular event. In the capital of Europe over two thousand geeks come together for a weekend of talks, hacking and socialising. Our contingent of KDE developers came on a road trip from the Netherlands and spent much of Friday evening spiraling Brussels until we came to the pre-FOSDEM party in Grand Place where we were greeted by the welcome sight of as many litre glasses of Hoegaarden as we could drink. The great and the good of Free Software were there including <a href="http://jriddell.org/photos/2005-02-26-fosdem/2005-02-28-fosdem-daf-alan-jonathan.jpgFOO">Alan Cox</a>, future Debian Project Leader <a href="http://www.angrydpl.com/">Matthew Garrett</a> and our own founder Matthias Ettrich.

One the Saturday we set up our stall selling a fine range of KDE t-shirts and badges sporting the <a href="http://www.kde.org/stuff/clipart.php">new official KDE logo</a>. The first KDE talk was on <a href="http://www.kde.me.uk/index.php?page=fosdem-2005-kdevelop-talk">KDevelop by Harald Fernengel</a> who ran us through the many features of KDE's IDE. We then retreated to our own KDE Developers room for a <a href="http://www.kde.me.uk/index.php?page=fosdem-2005-koffice-talk">talk on KOffice</a> discussing the up-coming 1.4 release and how to make plugins for KOffice using KParts.

That evening we went for a centre which trains women to use computers. In return for talking about Free Software and KDE we got internet access and a space to hack for the evening. It was great to see many of the women were already running GNU/Linux. They mentioned that they would really like Ubuntu if only it came with KDE, this made Jonathan and Andreas smile.

Sunday opened with <a href="http://www.kde.me.uk/index.php?page=fosdem-2005-kde-talk">Matthias's talk on KDE</a> showing how much the Unix desktop has changed since 1996. We are, he says, at a very exciting time in desktop development with challenges and opportunities including Qt4, desktop search, D-BUS and more.

Later in the day our developers room was busy for the <a href="http://www.kde.me.uk/index.php?page=fosdem-2005-kdepython-talk">KDE Development Using Python Talk</a>. Using Python will slow down your applications by only a second or two but speed up your development time by a factor of 2 or more because the language is so much easier to use than C++. KDevelop does not have excellent Python support so far he said, then at the end of the talk Alexander Dymo announced that he had added Python support for KDevelop's Qt Designer plugin which caused a round of spontaneous applause.

Our final talk was an update from Scott Wheeler about his ideas for <a href="http://www.kde.me.uk/index.php?page=fosdem-2005-search-talk">a searchable web of context</a> on the desktop. He has found existing search tools such as Google desktop and Beagle lacking becaue unlike Google on the web the desktop has no links, if we can add links to desktop entities then search will become a lot more powerful.

Other talks we went to included Alan Cox explaining how he manages to make a stable branch of Linux releases based on all the fixes Linus doesn't use; Hanna Wallach promoted the Debian Woman project ("not here to provide girlfriends to lonely geeks") which has managed to double the number of women involved with Debian and RMS presented the Free Software Foundation's award to OpenBSD's Theo de Raadt.

If you ever get the opportunity to go to FOSDEM make sure you go.

<a href="http://jriddell.org/photos/2005-02-26-fosdem/">Photos from Jonathan</a>, <a href="http://vizzzion.org/?id=gallery&gcat=Fosdem2005">Sebastian</a> and <a href="http://jriddell.org/photos/2005-02-26-fosdem/raphiel/">Raphiel</a>.

Old stuff

Programme

Friday 25	evening (time?)	drinks on the top floor of the Le Roi d'Espagne on the Grand Place says http://wiki.earth.li/FOSDEM2005 (the crew from .nl will meet at 21:30 also on the Grand Place, see below)
Saturday 26	10:30 - 18:00	FOSDEM talks and hacking (http://www.interface3.be/)
	evening (drive from FOSDEM)	hacking place arranged (Interface3.11: Hacking for Workgroups)
Sunday 27	10:00 - 18:00	FOSDEM talks and hacking

Tasks

Job	People
Cashbox Admin	Fab Mous, Jonathan Riddell, Maarten Rotten, Adriaan de Groot
Reporting	Fab, Jonathan, others please
Sticking up Posters
Bouncer during talks
Stall	Fab, Jonathan, others please
Coffee Bewer

People

Talk in #kde-fosdem on freenode.

If you don't feel comfortable by posting your personal information here you can always mail Fab your details at [email protected]. Also be aware if you would like to have one of the reserved sleeping places at the youth hostel you should contact Fab as well

Name	Nick	Phone	Coming from	Arrival Time	Departure	Transport	Accomodation
Jonathan Riddell	Riddell	*******	Edinburgh	1205 Thursday Amsterdam airport	1230 Tuesday Amsterdam airport	fly to amsterdam, road trip to brussels	youth hostel JB
Fabrice Mous	[fab]	********	Houten	Friday evening	Sunday evening	drive to Brussels	youth hostel JB
Raphael Langerhorst	raphael	*******	Austria, near Linz	Friday afternoon	Sunday or Monday	train	youth hostel JB
Jeff Snyder	je4d	******	Cambridge	Friday evening	Monday morning	plane (bmi) to brussels	youth hostel JB
Scott Wheeler	wheels	-no mobile-	Heidelberg	Friday evening	Sunday night	train	youth hostel JB
Matthias Ettrich	?	?	?	Friday evening	Monday morning	?	novotel hotel
Harald Fernengel	?	?	?	Friday evening	Monday morning	?	novotel hotel
Simon Edwards	Sime	?	Nijmegen	Friday evening	Sunday(?)	car (with Adriaan)	youth hostel JB
Alexander Dymo	?	?	?	?	?	?	?
Sebastian Kugler	sebas	*******	Nijmegen/NL	Friday evening	Sunday?	car (from Nijmegen with Adriaan, Simon, Bram)	youth hostel JB
Adriaan de Groot	[ade]	?	?	Friday evening	Sunday?	rental car	youth hostel JB
Craig Bradney	MrB	?	Luxembourg	Sat morning	Sun afternoon	Train	hotel
Peter Linell	mrdocs	?	?	?	?	?	hotel
Philippe Schroll	?	?	?	NAP	NAP	car	going home (only there on Sunday and helping out with KDE booth when needed)
Milan Mitrovic	milhouse	********	belgrade	friday	monday	plane	youth hostel
Bram Schoenmakers	bram85	*******	Eindhoven	Friday evening	Sunday?	car (with Adriaan)	youth hostel JB
Michael Brade	-	-	-	Friday late afternoon	Sunday evening	car(a lift)/train	youth hostel JB
Ben Lamb	-	-	London	late Fri night	Sunday evening	train	youth hostel (SleepWell)
John Tapsell	JohnFlux	********	Brighton	Friday Morning	Monday Evening	Eurostar	youth hostel JB
Mickael Marchand	mikmak	******	Grenoble	Saturday morning	Sunday evening	plane	youth hostel JB (not using KDE's reservations ;)
Andreas Mueller	amu		Cologne
David Pashley	JD	**********	Brighton	Friday Morning	Sunday Evening	eurostar	Youth hostel (with Debian)
Alfred Munnikes	-	-	-	Friday evening	Sunday evening	by train	Youth hostel JB
Thomas Zander	ThomasZ	-	-	Friday evening	Sunday evening	Driving	Novotel
Olivier Goffart	Gof	***********	Liege (be)	Saturday morning	Sunday evening	train	-
Will Stephenson	Bille	**********	Newcastle upon Tyne (uk)	Friday evening	Sunday evening	air	-
Richard Dale	rdale	***********	Reading (uk)	Friday evening	Sunday evening	Eurostar	-
Andy Goossens	gandy	***********	Boortmeerbeek (be)	Saturday morning	Sunday evening	train	Spending night at home

Transport

There will be 2 cars leaving from the Netherlands. Basicly we will have 2 travelling parties. One will leave from Nijmegen and the other one from Utrecht. (Fab 19/02/05)

Coming from Amsterdam?
Arriving at Amsterdam Airport (aka Schiphol) you should take train to Utrecht(45 mins) and there Fab can pick you up (if you have a place reserved in his car). (Fab 19/02/05)

Take a train to Brussels
Plane to Brussels or plane to Brussels Charleroi (plus an hours bus ride to Brussels)

Then you need to get to the university, bus 71 from Gare Central seems popular (get off at stop ULB-Solbosch and walk down ave. Heger on your right hand):
http://www.fosdem.org/2005/index/practical
http://www.multimap.com/map/browse.cgi?lat=50.8164&lon=4.3763&scale=5000&icon=x

Car Pooling

There'll be 3 cars going from the Netherlands. One kindly provided and ridden by Fabrice, leaving from Utrecht, one rental car leaving from Nijmegen (Adriaan is going to take are of renting it, costs will be ~40 EUR pp). And another car (Thomas Zander) leaves from Deventer. Rendez-vous points are probably (at least) going to be Utrecht, Nijmegen (and possibly Eindhoven).

Accommodation

16 places reserved at http://www.laj.be/html/en/hostels/brel/aubergesbrel_en01.htm for Friday and Saturday nights. Contact Fab if you are in need of a sleeping place. Update: No more places left in the youth hostel, fee for one night is 18 EUR in YH Jacques Brel (19/02/05)

Official talks

http://www.fosdem.org/2005/index/news/speakers (speakers list)
http://www.fosdem.org/index/schedule (FOSDEM schedule)

KDE Developer's Room

http://www.fosdem.org/2005/index/dev_room_kde (abstracts)
http://www.fosdem.org/2005/index/dev_room_kde/schedule (schedule)

http://www.kde.me.uk/index.php?action=edit&page=fosdem-2005 (Map of all DevRooms)
http://wiki.fosdem.org/tiki-index.php?page=DevroomAssignments (DevRoom assignments)

Equipment

Be sure to take network cables and power socket converters. Belgium uses the Euro style powerplugs (also used in f.e. the Netherlands and Germany), power specifications are 230V, 50Hz.

Equipment to be Insured

Jonathan: Thinkpad laptop, 600UKP, Serial No. 99-YWA21 jr@jriddell.org
Adriaan: Toshiba SP6100, E700, Serial No. 72366721G groot@kde.org

Hardware cannot be insured anymore (Fab 21/02/05)

Exhibition Booth

We have a booth assigned to KDE, made up of 2 slots (= 2 tables of approx. 1,80m width each). The FOSDEM organisation will try to put it in front of the KDE Devroom but it won't necessarely be possible. Be aware that we're moving between DevRooms between saturday and sunday.

Fab has a cashbox he will bring. Also he will take care of some change money (from KDE-NL) which need to be returned at the end of the event. We need to keep a stock list of what we sell.

So we still need:

a stock list (easy)
booth crew (Fab+?)
KDE merchandise (most important)

booth gear

KDE HP-posters
small Konqi mascotte
cashbox

merchandise

KDE-pins (old design) 50 pieces (KDE-NL)
case badges from Alfred Munikkes 80 pieces (KDE-NL)
t-shirts from KDE-GB (stocklist http://www.kde.me.uk/index.php?page=kde-gb-money)

KDE Meetings During FOSDEM

Rendezvous Friday Night

We meet at the bar "La Chaloupe d'Or" on the Grand-place (http://www.belgiumview.com/belgiumview/tl2/view0000701.php4) on Friday night. Between 21:30-22:00 to fetch a beer and socialize. You can recognize these KDE loonies by their stuffed friend Konqi.(20/02/05)
See also the beer rendezvous at Le Roi d'Espagne, also on the Grand Place (top of this page, under "Programme").

Saturday Night Hacking

We have a room for hacking space on Saturday evening which can take up to 50/60 people. Organised by Pascal Bleser. It is a charity which helps women into computing and they want someone to talk to women about KDE and Free Software.

It's pretty easy to get to Interface3 from the ULB:

5min away from FOSDEM there's a tram stop, rue Adolphe Buyl

(see campus map: http://wiki.fosdem.org/tiki-index.php?page=DevroomMaps)

tram 94 "Cimeti�re de Jette" drives to the Botanique (takes 20min)
there, from the Botanique, it's just 10min away to the "rue du M�ridien, 30".

More info

http://wiki.earth.li/FOSDEM2005 (debian-uk page)
http://wiki.fosdem.org/ (FOSDEM Wiki)